From a Parent Concerned about The Leader In Me Program

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The History of the 7 Habits

The 7 Habits were originally published as “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. The book’s tag-line is “Powerful lessons in personal change”. The book’s blurb says “Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity–principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.” This book is a self-help book intended for adults.

“The 7 Habits of Happy Kids” was written by Sean Covey, Stephen Covey’s son. Sean Covey works for FranklinCovey. According to their website, “FranklinCovey is a global company specializing in performance improvement. We help organizations achieve results that require a change in human behavior.”

FranklinCovey decided to create a curriculum for schools by re-writing “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” in the form of stories for children, and creating workbooks for every grade level K-5, posters, and teacher guides (also K-5). The company sells this curriculum to schools, along with teacher training programs, and paid speakers. The lucrative program costs $50,000+.

The Leader in Me wasn’t created by specialists in children’s education, or by behavioral psychologists. Sean Covey has a degree in English and an MBA from Harvard. FranklinCovey is a corporation that caters to other corporations. This was a very strange beginning for a deep, values-based, behavioral curriculum for K-5 elementary schools.

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One thought on “The History of the 7 Habits”

I’m reading your posts and haven’t made it all the way through, but wanted to stop here for a sec and comment that I am not put out at all that the creator is not an indoctrinated educator. That said, my skepticism led me here. I wary of anything that talks about “21st Century learning”.